Implementing a Transition of Care Policy in a Pediatric Primary Care Setting

Nursing shared governance is a professional practice model empowering nurses to make decisions about patient care, clinical practice standards, policy, professional development and evidenced-based care. The problem: There are close to 6,500 team members in the Department of Nursing who represent over 230 different job roles. To ensure every team member has a voice, we require a model that provides local forums for surfacing problems, ideas, needs, and suggestions at the team level, supported by a governance process to prioritize, resource, and resolve them. Our approach: We adapted a councilor model of shared governance that rests on four governance council types, and four supporting structures.